Golconda, 1953
Object-Based Essay
Golconda is a surrealist painting by René Magritte in 1953, and it is displayed at The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas (see fig. 1). Golconda is a painting that represents Magritte’s disruption of the physical world and his systematic search for mind liberation through paradoxical philosophy presented to the viewers in the hidden problems to be solved. In these problems, he juxtaposes familiar objects into an uncommon situation to reveal an invisible similarity between them. In Golconda, the problem of the space is presented, and it is inspired by Hegel’s concrete universal philosophy by evenly placing the isolated bowler-hatted man in the picture in a manner as the viewer observes as they recede in the background that they became a unity, thus a universal representation of anonymity. And its spectacular encounter with the sky represents the miracle of man in heavens. Once Magritte said that “the function of painting is to make poetry visible” (Gablik 147). Indeed, he achieved that with magnificent in Golconda.
The painting of a moderately size of 31 ½ × 39 ½ inches displays an array of nearly identical dressed Caucasian men in black suits with bowler hats in front of a suburban scene. The figures fill the painting’s forefront, middle, and background in a diagonal pattern. The figures in the forefront have distinct faces when looked closely and become unidentified as they recede into the distance above the rooftops. The figure in the middle of the center row is the of the poet Louis Scutenaire who named the painting (Gohr 275) (see fig. 2). The men are retracted in different positions, front and slighted left and right faced. They are spaced in a lattice pattern, facing the viewer and vanishing back in an irregular rhythm. Though they are floating, they stand still on flat feet, but the scene does not denote a sense of movement. It is unclear whether the men are falling or rising from the floor or stationery in the air.
In the foreground, we see a horizontal Victorian architecture building with a pattern of many windows closed to each other that fills half of the frame. The horizon line is determined by the pale red roof that creates a sense of vanishing point with the pale blue sky and the overlapped blurred small-sized man creating an aerial perspective. Besides, the men positioned in front of the building have shadows while those in the sky do not. Moreover, they are contrasted with the contour of the building in the right. The illusion of depth is achieved with the pattern of the men displayed in the painting. It creates an atmospheric perspective with the background’s men out of focus, and it has a linear perspective in the building at the right of the painting. The painting forms are geometric and are stable. It has built rectilinear form represented by the architecture in the background and the forefront and rounded and curvilinear figurative forms in the man in the hat. The contour lines used to demarcate, and separate forms are noted in the representation, in the building architecture and the edge of the square windows and drapery curtains.
There are three main color groups: the black of the man’s outfit, the pale red of the roof, and the cool blue of the sky mixing with the pale tone of the building. There is consistent use of light and shadow. The sunlight seems to be coming from the left since the shadows are positioned in the right. Also, the men face is lightening from the left, creating a tonal contrast between light and dark to three-dimensional model form. The background’s men are lightly painted in black, vanishing, or mixing in the light tone of the pale sky.
Golconda was painted in oil on canvas. Oil painting can convey different textures that can be observed in the men’s face, the folded coat, and in the outline of the window and the curtains of the architecture. The men in the front of the building are portrayed with a solid brushstroke making their look real and detailed. The men in the back are painted with light brushed style to evidence they are vanishing in the distance. The combination of these brush techniques and color creates the three-dimensional nature of the painting. The light tone of the sky creates an illumination contrast in the canvas.
Magritte has experimented with different styles in his career. For Magritte, the painting technique is insignificant, and what matters is the concept of the art. He believes that the techniques could distract the view from the painting purpose. As Magritte argues in an interview with Marcel Fryns, in 1962, “Technique is indispensable to make the work visible; therefore, it’s important, like the ink a writer uses. But the technique has no more importance than that; obviously, it is a means, not an end.” (Magritte et al. 209). Golconda is a piece that combines Magritte’s iconic image of the bowler-hatted man, his systematic search for philosophy, and the paradoxical connection between his title and the painting.
The central figure of Golconda is a group of bowler-hatted men. This figure was modeled and inspired by the protagonist of the film Fantômas and by Charlie Chaplin — both figures were influential in the Belgium Surrealist group (Allmer 26). The figure of the bowler hat man and its variations is a recurring character or protagonist of Magritte’s artworks, especially in the 1950s. Contrasting with the other Surrealists, overall, Magritte had an ordinary life. His life was modest, and his daily habits were like any other person walking his dog, doing groceries, and meeting with friends. He was frequently seeing dressed in a suit and hat as the bowler hat man. The bowler hat man became a representation of Magritte itself (Gablik 154–155). Suzy Gablik asserts that the bowler hat man “seems to live the history of ideas rather than the history of the world” (156) in a sense that he is detached from the physical world and became what Baudelaire defined as a dandy, representing the idea of combating triviality. Therefore, this isolation also enables the bowler-hatted man to represent all men, as Gablik remarks “collective physiognomy of the bowled-hatted man becomes representative of a group soul, reflecting a pattern of submerged values of which it does not matter, in the last resort, whether or not they were intended by Magritte (156)”. Although living an ordinary life, Magritte was one of the most magnificent and eloquent artists of the Surrealist movement, branding his own style.
In his artwork, Magritte has pursued a poetic effect. Magritte’s painting defies preconceived society ideas and conventional sense. His artworks present a solution to problems, in a philosophy manner, by rearranging the known objects into unfamiliar situations. Magritte believed his art achieved success when the curiosity was not satisfied with a natural explanation. He intended to use images to evoke mystery and questioning of reality and habits into the viewer’s mind. The paradoxes of existence that his artwork presents would provoke the liberation of the mind by instigating the viewer to investigate the structure of the common sense of reality (Gablik 10–11). Magritte has developed an authentic Surrealist methodology in his pieces. Instead of juxtaposing dissimilar objects as did the Classical Surrealism, he examined the hidden affinities between objects. Thus, thinking of pictures as problems to be a solution. In these problems, every object is linked to another object, and that special connection needed to be discovered. That leashed a “systematic search for the particular psychological or morphological evidence, obscurely attached to an object, which would yield up the unilateral and irreversible poetic meaning of that object.” (Gablik 103). This method’s principle is based on a “Hegelian dialectic of contradictions, in which a union of opposites operated as the mainspring of reality” (Gablik 104). Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe, The Treachery of Images, 1929, is a crucial example of how important is the understanding that the image of a pipe is a mere representation of a pipe, not the pipe itself. This concept is central to enlighten the mind onto the mysteries present by Magritte’s work. When the viewers comprehend that the image seen is a mere representation, then no preconceived ideas about the real objects will interfere in the identity of the object. That means that in Magritte’s painting, he intends to create autonomy objects freed from the bonds and functions they represent in the real world as they become what the German philosopher Hegel refers to as concrete universals. Thus, they fluctuate into new possibilities (Gablik 106). Furthermore, as those possibilities develop, an excellent idea emerges. The dialectal process of Magritte’s painting is based on a thesis and antithesis synthesis that produces a paradoxical dynamism of the experiences pictured (Gablik 108).
Magritte was inspired by Hegel’s philosophy. In Hegel’s Holiday, 1958, he explores the hidden relation between a glass of water and an umbrella. Magritte defines this painting as the solution to the question of “how to paint a glass of water with genius” explaining his thinking process in the following: “I then thought that Hegel (another genius) would have been very sensitive to this object which has two opposing functions: at the same time not to admit any water (repelling it) and to admit it (containing it). He would have been delighted, I think, or amused (as on a vacation) and I call the painting Hegel’s Holiday” (Gablik 122). In his works, Magritte pursued the enlightening of mind by isolation an object freeing it from its preconceived role, by modification some aspect of the object as the defying the gravity by placing objects that seem to be levitating in the artwork The Glass Key, 1959 and the bowler hat man in Golconda — both exposed at the Menil Collection. And by paradox through anthesis and contradictions as he explores the richness of Golconda vs. the richness of the mind. This paradox of Golconda is achieved by the contrast of the titles meaning and the concept of the painting.
Titles were very important to Magritte as he declared to an interviewer in 1959, “The tile of a painting is an image made with words (…) The title and painting enrich and specify a way of thinking that delights in images whose meaning is unknow” (Yeazell 232). He believed that titles prevent the viewer from placing his pictures in a context. And his images precede his titles. In fact, it was common for Magritte to invite his friends to name his artworks when completed. The poet Louis Scutenaire, whose Golconda’s title was suggested by, was estimated to name 170 of Magritte’s artworks (Yeazell 226). As for Golconda, it was a rich Indian city in the 16th century that was the center of the diamond industry and by the 1880s became a synonym of a rich mine or a definition of a “great source of wealth” (Merriam-Webster).
Surrealism is an artistic and literary movement that flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II. It was founded in Paris by the poet Andre Breton who publish The First Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Inspired by theories of Freud and Carl Jung, the goal of the movement was to inspire the social revolution from the oppressive and destructive force of the rationalism present in the world at that war period. That social revolution would be achieved by mind liberation using artworks to work on the inner psyche of the viewer, combining aspects of the inner and outer reality in a dream state to provoke the subconscious of the viewer to mystery and thinking (Kleiner 921–922). The same year, Belgium’s Surrealist group launched Correspondance that would discuss modernism and avant-garde movements of the period and often criticized the bourgeois of the Parisian group (Canonne 9). Although the Parisians and Belgians Surrealists were connected to the concept of the Communist ideas and to the revolutionary’s movements that inspired Europe that period, they differ in many aspects. The Brussels Surrealism rejected the psychoanalysis and unconscious dream interpretation in the production of the artwork (Allmer 37). Besides, although they were revolutionaries at their art, Magritte and the Brussel’s Surrealist praised modesty in their lifestyle. In a text written with collaboration with Scutenaire in 1939, Magritte criticizes the futility of society and Bougeouis Art, and claims that art needs to evoke the ideas of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, remarking that Hegel saw art as a means to allow man to “express his very innermost spirit through enduring actions” (Magritte et al. 68–69). Magritte strong believes that art has the power to liberate the mind and revolutionize society.
Bernard Noel apprises that for Magritte, “thought, poetry, and painting were not three different activities” (Abadie 257), and combined, they created a mystery that enlightens the mind. His painting was a process of mental activity. He was heavily influenced by his Belgium Surrealist circle, which like him, differed from the eccentric Parisian group and preferred a reserved social life. The group was composed of musicians, writers, and poets, including Magritte’s poets and intellectual friends Paul Nogé and Louis Scutenaire (Abadie 257). As Gohr points out, Magritte’s circle of friends reflects that influence of philosophy, psychology, and literacy in the Surrealist movement and the picture thinking process that features Magritte’s art (38). This influence is heavily retracted in Golconda. In an interview for Life Magazine in 1966, Magritte’s explained the concept of Golconda:
I suppose you can call me a surrealist. But one should really say I am concerned with realism, even though that usually refers to daily life in the street. It should be that realism means the real with the mystery that is in the real. I want to show reality in such a way that it evokes the mystery (…) People are always looking for symbolism in my work. There is none. It doesn’t have that sort of sense. Take this painting, Golconda: there is a crowd of men, different men. But since one doesn’t think of an individual in a crowd, the men are dressed the same, as simply as possible, to indicate a crowd. But what is it all about? Does it mean I see man everywhere? Not really. Perhaps I put men where you don’t expect to see them. But then, man is in the sky too, isn’t he? And the earth travels in the sky, and man is there on the earth. As for the title — Golconda was an Indian city of riches, something of a marvel. I think it is a marvel to travel through the sky on the earth. The bowler, on the other hand, poses no surprise. It is a headdress that is not original. The man with the bowler is just middle class man in his anonymity. And I wear it. I am not eager to singularize myself (…) Visible things can be invisible (…) I use painting to make thought visible.
(Visions of René Magritte 117–119)
Thus, as Magritte sustains, Golconda is a representation of the idea of a miracle — to travel through heaven on earth; men in heavens. However, how is that related to the question of space? Gohr points out that the problem of space in Golconda is “addressing the quality of space per se (…) perception is challenged in two ways — by the motif and by the spatial ambivalence” (276). At first, the viewer confronted with the individual man in the foreground, and the pictorial displacement of the man in smaller sizes bring the viewer focus to the background of the painting, turning the individual man into a crowd. That crowd emerges as a representation of unity — the anonymous men (Gohr 276).
Magritte lived an ordinary life and yet was one of the most intriguing and eloquent of the Brussel’s surrealist group. Inspired by Hegel’s philosophy, he pursued the liberation of mind by freeing familiar objects from its preconceived role. He described his images as the solutions to problems. In Golconda, the problem of space is explored by defying physical laws and the hidden connection of the title and the space of the bowler-hatted man. Magritte subverted the world with poetry in his artworks. He lived through tense periods between wars that aroused the questioning of politics and social values. Golconda thus is a masterpiece that evokes the viewer to question its meaning and the sense of reality, paving the way to the desired mind liberation.
REFERENCES
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